There’s no one size fits all solution to application migration. However, with a well-defined strategy and a carefully considered approach, you can prevent obstacles and avoid roadblocks and common pitfalls when updating legacy systems. In our experience, these are the issues that are commonly overlooked, disregarded and undervalued when modernizing legacy applications and systems.
Tip #1: Identify Entangled Dependencies
Far too often, organizations begin cloud migration and app modernization without considering the impacts to other applications and systems. An unexpected dependency can bring an entire migration project to a halt. Thus, it is crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of the dependencies of each application and how to effectively manage them during the transition to the cloud.
Application migration often involves various teams across areas of a company, but the people who understand and created the initial dependencies might not be the ones involved in the application modernization project. Since different areas of the business might have competing agendas or priorities related to the app migration or timing, it’s important to consult with all parties that might be impacted by the transition.
Facilitating collaboration between technical and business stakeholders often leads to multiple solutions for managing interdependencies, ensuring the right resources come together.
When we engage with clients for cloud migration projects, we must ask the team questions about the applications being evaluated:
- Will there be latency if one app is on-premise and another is hosted on the cloud?
- If we put that app in the cloud does the data warehouse also need to be in the cloud?
- Which applications rely on each other’s data, and how will cloud migration affect them?
Asking these types of questions can unearth hidden dependencies and considerations. Figuring out the right set of architectural principles that will be important to consider and underestimating application dependencies can be a serious roadblock if not mitigated ahead of time.
Tip #2: Avoid Enterprise Governance Gridlock
Sometimes inflexible governance can get in the way of progress at larger organizations and become a major roadblock. Watch out for networking, security, and architectural guidelines that may be at odds with the intended migration plan.
For instance, we encountered a client scenario where multiple teams were responsible for different aspects of governance. One team oversaw application architecture governance, another focused on data security regulations (such as HIPAA and credit card standards), and another handled network perimeter security. Each team operated with its own governance plan, and unfortunately, these plans sometimes clashed with one another, creating significant obstacles and hindering progress and compliance efforts.
In this case, the solution was to establish oversight with a unifying group to resolve conflicts and set up collaborative structures for enterprise governance, ensuring they aligned with each other rather than conflicting.
At Productive Edge, we approach technology governance with three ascending categories: boundaries, fences and iron bars, allowing for a more flexible system to implement restrictions, security measures, permissions, and other governance structures within defined boundaries. Often, if a company’s enterprise governance is too rigid to get anything done, teams may need to negotiate to avoid unmitigated gridlock. By facilitating open discussions and collaborative decision-making, departments can work toward mutually beneficial agreements that allow for progress while still maintaining necessary governance measures.
Tip #3: Get Ahead of Networking Conundrums
Legacy applications have a higher chance of security issues that if not considered before migration could have serious impacts when migrated to the cloud. A complicated corporate network is often overlooked because it’s like air—it’s everywhere, but you don’t see it. Things like asymmetric routing, firewall, gateway, and certificate issues can be difficult to troubleshoot when they are discovered during migration instead of being planned in advance. Together they can seriously impede progress toward a successful application migration.
The change to cloud might make a significant difference in the way regulatory compliance is handled, or the ways data is managed across applications. Companies that delay or omit this work for the sake of speed accrue technical debt, the implied cost incurred when businesses do not fix problems that will affect them in the future, which they need to pay back later or face consequences. Technical debt in the corporate network, such as the illicit use of public IPs or unencrypted communication, can cause glaring security gaps and existing problems to worsen over time. The longer debt builds up, the more costly it becomes to rectify.
Planning for and uncovering potential network issues early can prevent security and legal troubles and promote a smooth cloud application migration.
Tip #4: Ensure Cloud Compatibility
When creating a legacy application modernization strategy, the cloud-readiness of code and architecture must be considered. Some of our clients have struggled with key elements of cloud migration planning such as timing and prioritization. They might not be looking at the big picture of their migration, or they might be focusing too much on specific details—this is where our app modernization roadmap is most useful.
Assessing each app for cloud compatibility may be a deciding factor in when if at all, an app is migrated. For example, down-level .NET apps may require significant code changes to containerize, and existing monitoring or logging technologies may be antiquated or unworkable in the cloud. In reality, it may be too costly or too time-consuming to migrate some legacy applications practically. Identifying your company’s most beneficial and workable applications will uncover gaps that need to be filled and ease the process of creating your modernization plan.
Tip #5: Find Business Value & Prioritize the Portfolio
Some of our clients find themselves with too many applications to move into a single migration. Consequently, they don’t know where to start, they’re struggling to determine what should be prioritized or they’re staring down a budgeting and prioritization issue.
It’s important to evaluate and prioritize which legacy applications to migrate and which to retire, refactor, or rehost, and which may require an architectural overhaul to fully utilize the cloud environment and achieve the intended benefits of migration. While technical ease is an important factor to consider because of the cost of migration, if an app isn’t providing business value by being in the cloud, others should be prioritized or added. Though the nature of legacy application modernization may make the relative cost-benefit analysis misleading or difficult to quantify, thoroughly evaluate which applications will bring the greatest business value when migrated.
In the evaluation process at larger companies, competing priorities often add complexity. While the effort is typically led as an enterprise-wide IT initiative, individual business units may have their own IT perspectives focused solely on their applications. This limited view can hinder their ability to answer broader questions about the business value.
Another potential roadblock arises when IT fails to fully grasp the evolving needs of the business, such as scalability, availability, or enhanced security services, which can be more effectively addressed through cloud solutions. It is crucial to involve business stakeholders in addition to the technical teams to ensure a comprehensive evaluation where both technical and business values are considered. This inclusive approach allows everyone to assess and comprehend the relative costs and business benefits associated with cloud migration.
Business value as the crux of the evaluation criteria brings clarity to the situation. For example, an application that functions for 10,000 users on-premise, could be expanded to serve 100,000+ users on the cloud, creating an opportunity for business growth that would not exist if the app remained housed in its initial infrastructure. Identifying these nuggets of business value is a critical component of the prioritization formula.
Conclusion
Successfully navigating legacy application migration is crucial for organizations seeking to modernize and optimize their IT infrastructure. Embracing a proactive, strategic approach to modernization will streamline processes, ensure a smooth transition, and set the stage for increased efficiency, scalability, and innovation, ultimately positioning the organization for long-term success in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Download our eBook, Accelerating App Modernization and Cloud Adoption Strategy, to discover the benefits of cloud migration and next steps for getting started with your journey, and contact our experts to begin your cloud migration roadmap.
